


It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

by openended



Series: Marge the Cat [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Christmas Eve, and Sam’s home on leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midwifeonboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midwifeonboard/gifts).



The flash of white light outside tugs him from slumber. He blinks at the wall and tries to force the readout on the clock to make sense. It’s only when he hears a familiar voice cursing about winter and the Lucian Alliance and stupid safeguards and _the frakking IOA_ that things click into place; he smiles as she stomps around in the snow and lets herself in. He decides not to greet her at the door – he knows that she’s headed straight to bed – and allows himself to drift back asleep once he’s ascertained, by the way she greets the cat, that she’s in one piece and bears no bad news.

She navigates her way around his cabin by memory, with help from the full moon coming in through the windows whose curtains he never bothers to close. Once in the hall bathroom with the door closed behind her, she flips on the light so she can find her pajamas where they’ve settled in the bottom of her duffel bag. If she has to, she’ll sleep in her underwear. She doubts he’ll mind much. She sees spots for a few seconds, but she doesn’t need to see to brush her teeth. Sleep tugs at the edges of her vision but she forces herself to stay awake, multi-tasking as she brushes her teeth with one hand and unlaces her boots with the other. “Quiet, Marge,” she whispers around the toothbrush to the cat beginning to scratch at the closed door. He got the cat when she’d joked about him needing a pet so he wasn’t quite so pathetic when she wasn’t around; he’s absolutely a dog person, but he refuses to get one until his life doesn’t require him to be gone for eighteen hours a day.

She spits out the toothpaste and rinses her mouth, still searching with one hand for her missing pajamas. She’s about to give up – he’s a furnace anyway – when she successfully pulls out her pajama pants attached to a tank top whose straps have gotten tangled in the tie of the pants. She sleepily shakes at the clothing, willing it to sort itself out, and the tank top drops to the floor. “Thank you,” she whispers, and makes quick work of her flight suit. She’s torn for a moment between a proper shower – she’d managed to squeeze five minutes with the base shower in between when the IOA was done with her and when Cam needed her to sort out an argument with Daniel and Vala – and bed, but she sways and braces her hand against the wall and decides resolutely on _sleep now, shower later_. She shoves everything back into her duffel bag to be sorted out properly in the morning and flips off the light. “Move,” she hisses and Marge takes the advice to heart and runs in the other direction once she opens the door.

It takes everything she has not to just drop on the bed and fall asleep on top of the covers. He must sense her exhaustion, because no sooner has she almost given in to the urge to fall asleep _right there_ than he lifts up the blankets for her. She crawls in, pressing her back to his chest, and squirms around to get just right. She blindly reaches behind her and grabs his arm, tugging it over her stomach. Her fingers lace with his.

He presses a kiss against the nape of her neck. “Welcome home, Sam.”

She smiles, half asleep, and squeezes his hand.

* * *

  
Marge wakes Jack up by using him as her personal climbing gym, finally settling next to his head, purring loudly. He tries to gently push her away, but his arm is stuck. He forces his eyes open and smiles as the sleeping woman next to him comes into focus. She managed to roll over in the night to face him, her head tucked underneath his chin. Jack brushes a kiss against her forehead and tries to ignore the cat now doing laps of the bed. It’s been months since Sam’s had leave of any worthwhile length and he knows that this week will fly by. He finally gives in, telling himself that he can always climb back in bed with her once Marge has been appeased and the coffee maker has been turned on (it used to be on a timer, but a power outage cleared out the memory and Sam’s the one who knows how to program the thing). After carefully extracting his arm from underneath Sam’s neck, he slides out of bed. He tugs the covers up around her shoulders and quietly heads toward the kitchen.

The cold floors and chilly air succeed in waking him up beyond the point of being able to go back to sleep. Marge jumps up on the counter while he pokes at the coffee maker and he scratches between her ears before setting her down on the floor where she meows and winds around his legs. “Okay, fine,” he says, “but this is _really_ the last time I take care of you first,” he shakes his head and puts food down for her before returning to the coffee maker. When he’s certain that coffee will appear in the next ten minutes and not explode onto the counter in the process, he makes his way back to the bedroom.

He leans against the doorframe and smiles. She’s moved into the exact center of the bed and pulled the comforter almost completely over her, leaving just her nose and the top of her head visible. Jack decides not to wake her, but sneaks into the bathroom to brush his teeth and grab his shampoo so he can shower in the hall bathroom.

Sam wakes with the creaking pipes and digs further into the mass of heavy blankets on top of her. She knows that there’s no way she’s falling asleep again – she’s never been able to go back to sleep once she’s woken up – but outside the bed is too cold and inside the bed is too comfortable for her to move just yet. It’s only when she feels Marge jump on the bed next to her that she scoots up, sitting so she can pet the cat without flailing aimlessly through the covers. “You’ve gotten big,” she says with a hint of pride when Marge butts her head into Sam’s open palm. The last time she saw Marge, she needed help to get on the bed; now she can jump up all on her own.

“She likes you best.”

Jack’s voice startles Sam from her thoughts, but she recovers quickly and grins and leans back against the pillows. It’s been a while since she’s had the opportunity to enjoy the sight of him in just a towel tied around his waist, his gray hair sticking up in every direction imaginable. “I’m a novelty.” She immediately winces, regretting her words.

Jack can see the wheels turning in her brain, analyzing how the galaxy of distance is harder for him than it is for her and how best to backpedal and erase the last ten seconds of their lives. He ignores the look on her face and steps toward her. They’ve been down that road, had that conversation and he’s almost positive there’s a piece of paper somewhere in the cabin containing notes from the two hours they spent at his kitchen table, discussing whether this thing between them was really a good idea given that she was scheduled to leave on the _George Hammond_ and he was headed back to Washington.

He stops halfway to the bed to smirk about that. Leave it to Sam to take notes about a relationship. He wonders if he can sneak off sometime today and find it, maybe stick it in her stocking as a reminder that this thing between them – which desperately needs a better name, and he’s fully intent on making the better name happen this week – was a _phenomenal_ idea, despite the pro/con list being heavily weighted towards _con_. “Yes,” he says finally, acknowledging her comment. “But you’re _my_ novelty.”

Sam smiles and closes her eyes in silent laughter at him. She senses Jack walking toward her and she gently pushes Marge off the bed. Sam opens her eyes and, seeing him kneeling on the bed not ten inches away, quirks an eyebrow as if to say _well, are you coming?_

He drops the towel over the side of the bed as his lips touch hers properly for the first time in weeks.

* * *

  
“Stop thinking,” Jack commands softly, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He runs his fingers through her hair, unsure how he feels about the brown (though absolutely sure it has something to do with Vala) but he likes the length. He brushes a stray tendril behind her ear.

Sam sighs contently and settles further into his embrace. She draws the equation for the entropy with a fingertip on his bare chest. “Can’t help it,” she says. They may have today and tonight to themselves, but company’s scheduled to arrive before breakfast tomorrow for the SG-1 reunion they’ve been meaning to have for years. That it coincides with Christmas is icing on the cake, but means that there’s at least some preparation needed and they can’t stay in bed all day.

“I bought everything on that insane list of yours,” he says, answering the question he knows is on the tip of her tongue. “Ah,” he places a finger on her lips when she opens her mouth, “and I went back five times for the _oh and also_ emails.”

Sam’s cheeks flush and she buries her face in his shoulder. She wants to say that it’s not her fault there were so many follow-up emails (and it’s not, really, because things would be easier if Cam would make up his mind about pie, Teal’c would tell her if he’s bringing Ishta and Daniel would actually answer her in a timely fashion when she asks him if he’d prefer mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes) and that she did, in fact, check it twice before hitting send on the message whose subject read _Big Damn Shopping List_. But she feels him smile and hug her a little bit tighter and she simply shakes her head, mostly at herself. She’s always been a list maker and if Jack wants to tease her for it, that’s fine.

Jack pats at the edge of the bed until Marge hops up; she circles Jack and Sam twice before worming her way between them and settling down for a nap. He feels Sam relax against him, dozing off in his arms, and he spares a glance to the clock, conscious of the baking and wrapping that needs to be done today.

* * *

  
Satisfied that Sam is, for the moment, sufficiently distracted by a roll of wrapping paper and a tape dispenser in the bedroom, Jack pulls the small box out of his jeans pocket. He pops the catch and checks the bedroom door – still shut – before flipping the lid all the way open. He’d bought the ring on P4A-somethingorother when he’d found himself inexplicably with ten spare minutes between meetings with the local government; rather than idle around the planet’s version of a water cooler, he’d opted for some fresh air and took a stroll through the street market a few blocks over from the summit.

The vendor had spun him some yarn about it being a relic from a past civilization and worn on the finger of a princess, but Jack didn’t care: the small, circular blue stone surrounded by intricate metalwork had called to him. He’d asked a scientist to check it out when he returned to Earth, just to make sure it wouldn’t accidentally blow up and the scientist had confirmed not only that it would not explode, but also that the vendor’s story was probably mostly true; at least, in terms of age and that he definitely should’ve been charged more for the rarity of the stone.

Light from the kitchen window glints off the gem and Jack’s reminded of the Stargate.

He hears movement from the bedroom and quickly snaps the lid shut again and slides the box into his pocket. By the time Sam emerges, arms completely loaded down with shiny wrapped packages, Jack’s head is stuck in the fridge, looking for some vegetables to chop.

“Everything wrapped?” He asks, standing up with a bag of carrots in hand when she comes back from unloading everything underneath the tree.

Sam nods and breathes a dramatic sigh of relief. She stops in the middle of stretching her arms over her head and looks at him through squinted eyes. “You didn’t peek, did you?” She’d sent a box through the Gate a week earlier to Jack’s attention and scrawled _Jack – don’t even think of opening this_ on all sides. She wouldn’t mind so much if her gifts were solely nifty things to distract Jack while she’s away, but she’s rather proud of the deep blue alien leather jacket she picked up offworld while waiting for village elders to make up their minds about whether they wanted her to take care of the Lucian Alliance problem in their solar system. Her second in command had given her no end of grief when she had him try on jacket after jacket to find one that would look and fit right on Jack’s body; she rewarded him for his efforts – and for serendipitously having the exact body type of her…whatever they were calling themselves that week – with one of his own.

Jack holds up his hands. “Nope.” Catching her skeptical look, he makes a cross motion over his heart with his finger.

Sam brushes a kiss against his cheek and silences the timer as it alerts them that the first batch of cookies is done.

* * *

  
“Five minutes,” Sam says, settling in on the couch, mug of coffee in hand.

Jack looks at her over his own mug, confused. “Hm?”

Sam nods toward Marge, curled up asleep in front of the fire. “Five minutes before the wood pops and she freaks out.”

“Ah,” Jack chuckles and slides his arm around Sam’s shoulders, pulling her close. He’s not going to take that bet; Marge tends to panic and sprint out of the room at the slightest provocation.

Sam takes a sip of coffee and sets her mug down on the table. She rests her head against Jack’s chest, closes her eyes and just feels him breathe. Moments like these are what get her through weeks alone on a spaceship at the other end of the galaxy.

Careful to not disturb her too much, Jack reaches over and pulls out the drawer of the side table and the box hidden inside it. He’d thought about doing this tomorrow, with everyone around to share the moment, but big gestures have never been their style. He also had a speech planned, but even if he could remember a single word of it now he wouldn’t. He kisses her temple and nudges her shoulder. “Sam?”

Sam blinks and sits up, twining her fingers with his. “Yeah?”

“Will you marry me?” The words come out softer than he’d intended.

It’s starting to snow outside and tomorrow will be hectic and she’s just remembered that they forgot to make pie crust, but with the firelight and Christmas tree illuminating the face of the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, Sam thinks that things are pretty damn perfect. “Yes.”


End file.
